Google wins Monash Uni email

Summary:After a swathe of universities announced deals with Microsoft for its free Live@edu hosted email, Monash University has said it will provide the rival Gmail service to its 58,000 students instead.

After a swathe of universities announced deals with Microsoft for its free Live@edu hosted email, Monash University has said it will provide the rival Gmail service to its 58,000 students instead.

Students will be given sign up details for their new Google
accounts next month, according to Monash University's
vice-chancellor professor Edward Byrne. The students would also be
informed on how to use other online tools that Google Applications
offered.

"We want to give students the best online tools on offer in
order to boost their communication and information sharing
capabilities and in terms of our e-technology capital, we are
giving the university plenty of room to grow in the future," Byrne
said.

Storage would increase to 7GB from the current 40MB each user is
allocated. Students will also be able to chat, integrate email with
online calendar as well as work collaboratively with fellow
students on shared documents.

Alumni might also get access to the service, Byrne said, with
the university currently looking into the possibility. There was no
mention of using the email service for its 7000 staff.

Lately, Microsoft has been named by universities as their email partner, despite Macquarie University (one of
the first Australian universities to take the plunge) opting for
Gmail.

In the last year, WA TAFE, Curtin University, University of NSW,
University of Queensland, University of Sydney, the Australian
Catholic University, the University of Canberra, Victoria
University and the Queensland University of Technology have all
decided to go with the software company's Live@edu product.

On the other side of the scale, the Universities of Adelaide,
Auckland, Macquarie University and the NSW Department of Education have
publicly opted for Gmail.

Monash University did not state its reasons for deciding to
implement Google's product instead of Microsoft's.

Suzanne Tindal cut her teeth at ZDNet.com.au as the site's telecommunications reporter, a role that saw her break some of the biggest stories associated with the National Broadband Network process. She then turned her attention to all matters in government and corporate ICT circles. Now she's taking on the whole gamut as news editor for t...
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